Video: Scaling and editing traced art

In this movie, we're going to finish up our great big 5 foot wide by 3 foot tall vector-based pirate flag here inside of Illustrator. Now, I've already gone ahead and made this red field in the background exactly the right size, so it's 5 feet wide, with a little extra, we've got an inch on each side for the bleed, and it's 3 feet tall, with an inch at the top and the bottom for the bleed as well. However, our skeleton sabers are way too tiny. In fact, this is what we're looking for, this final piece of artwork right here. So I've not only made the core artwork much larger, but I've also gone ahead and tweaked the location of the eyes a little bit, the ghost eyes in the center here, and I've modified the color of the scarf.

In Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced, author and industry expert Deke McClelland teaches how to take advantage of the wide array of dynamic features in Illustrator CS5. This course demonstrates how to apply these features to paths, groups, and editable text to create professional-quality artwork. The course covers Live Trace, Live Paint, and Live Color, as well as symbols, gradients, exporting, and integration with Photoshop. Exercise files accompany the course.

Scaling and editing traced art

In this movie, we're going to finish up our great big 5 foot wide by 3 foot tallvector-based pirate flag here inside of Illustrator.Now, I've already gone ahead and made this red field in the background exactlythe right size, so it's 5 feet wide, with a little extra, we've got an inch oneach side for the bleed, and it's 3 feet tall, with an inch at the top and thebottom for the bleed as well.However, our skeleton sabers are way too tiny.In fact, this is what we're looking for, this final piece of artwork right here.So I've not only made the core artwork much larger, but I've also gone ahead andtweaked the location of the eyes a little bit, the ghost eyes in the centerhere, and I've modified the color of the scarf.

So let's see how that works.I'm going to switch back to my art in progress, which I've called Tiny flaginsignia.ai, and I'm going to go over to the layers panel and I'm going tounlock the black layer because we want to modify the contents of that layer, andI'm going to lock down deep red, because the big field of red in the backgroundis exactly where it needs to be.Then I'll press Ctrl+A or Command+A on the Mac to select everything that'sunlocked, that is the entire contents of the black and white layers.I don't want to see all these anchor points, so I'm going to press Ctrl+H orCommand+H on the Mac to hide the selection edges.

Then I'll switch to the Scale tool, which I can get by pressing the S key, andthere's my transformation origin right there in the pirate's eye, but I want tomove my cursor about 45 degrees away from that origin point.So I might start dragging at the base of this right hand saber handle, and I'mgoing to drag down into the right in order to increase the size of this artwork.Now, if I press the Shift key, I'll also constrain the proportions, but youknow what, just because we have so much width associated with this flag, I wantto actually make him a little wider than I drew him, in proportion to his height of course.

So I'll just make sure, I'll press the Shift key here and I can see that, thatwould be the normal proportions right there, and so if I release the Shift keyand drag out a little bit, that's going to be wider.Now, I'll release in order to increase the size of that art.Now, what we just saw was an absolute minor miracle, because that's the kind ofthing you can't do in Photoshop with pixels.If we were trying to scale up the pixels, then we would soften the transitions,we would not necessarily do ourselves any good, because we would just add pixelsfor the sake of adding pixels, we wouldn't add better detail, whereas when youscale this artwork as vectors inside of Illustrator, then you retain theserazor-sharp edges, no matter how much scaling you apply.

So this artwork is going to look absolutely fantastic at its new, larger size.All right, I'm going to zoom back out, because now I want to go ahead andcolor in that scarf.So I'm going to grab my Black Arrow tool from the top of the toolbox, and I'mgoing to select these white paths that should be filled with red if I want tocolor the scarf red.So I'll press Ctrl+H, by the way, or Command+H on the Mac to bring backmy selection edges.Then I'll click off my artwork to deselect it, and I'll go ahead and click onone of those path outlines, and what that does is it grabs black, in my case.So I'm going to lock down black once again, so that doesn't get in my way.

And I'm going to click now on the white shapes to select them.So I'm clicking and Shift+clicking on these various white shapes in order toselect each one of them.This is the most tedious part of the process, quite frankly, is grabbing allthese shapes, because at a point it's a little difficult to determine who shouldbe part of this scarf and who shouldn't, but if you follow my lead here, you'llget everything that I regard to be part of the scarf, because this part backhere, for example, is a bit of the saber.This is a part of his jaw.This is part of the earring right there.This is part of his skull and so on.

So some of these shapes I absolutely do not want.All right, so those are all the scarf shapes, and now what we want to do iscreate yet another new layer, again, just to keep all the colors and differentlayers, so that the printer can decide what he or she needs to get the job done.I'll press Ctrl+Alt+L, Command+Option+ L on the Mac to create a new layer, andI'll call this light red, and then I'll change the color back to that grassgreen that we were using earlier, and I'll click OK.I'll move this below white actually, and then I'll go ahead and take this bluesquare right there to the right of the white layer, that represents all theselected items, and I'll drag it down onto the light red layer.

Now, that doesn't change the color of those objects, it just changes their location.Now, to change the color, up here in the Color panel, the Hue value is already0, that's what I want.The Saturation value should be 100 once again, and I'm going to take theBrightness value down to 65, so it's just a little bit lighter than the deepred of the background.Then I'll click off of that artwork in order to deselect it.Now, finally, I want to go ahead and move the eyes to a slightly differentlocation, the ghost eyes in the center, and there's all kinds of modificationsyou could make from this point if you want to here inside of Illustrator.

You can go nuts on these path outlines if you want to customize this art, but Ijust want to move the eyes around a little.First of all, this red inside the eyes is actually part of the black layer,because we've got a compound path here, we've got the big eye path filled withblack, with this area of red carved out of it.So I have to unlock the black layer to get to it, but then if I click on it withthe Black Arrow tool, I select both the inside and the outside of the eye,because they're all combined together into one compound path as I say.So I'm going to click off the shapes in order to deselect them and I'm goingto grab my White Arrow tool, the Direct Selection tool, which you can get bypressing the A key, and then I'll Alt+ click or Option+click on that eye pathin order to select it.

And now I'm going to move it a little bit.I'm going to do that by the way by double-clicking on the Black Arrow tool tobring up my Move dialog box, and I'll change the Horizontal value to -16, theVertical value to 0, and then press the Tab key.And make sure Preview is turned on.So this is the location of the path outline before and this is its current location.So I'm just moving that path outline.And of course I could have just dragged it if I wanted to or nudge it from thekeyboard, but I wanted a very specific modification, so that's why I brought upthe Move dialog box.

I'll click OK, and then I'll Shift+Alt +click or Shift+Option+click with thewrong tool, so that's not going to do it.I've got to switch back to the White Arrow tool.All right, let's try that again.I'll Alt+click or Option+click on this path to select the whole thing, thenShift+Alt+click or Shift+Option+click on this path, and then double-click againon the Black Arrow tool to bring up the Move dialog box.And this time I don't want to move this horizontal, I'm going to press 0 forthe Horizontal value.I'm going to move both of these paths down 16 points.So I'll enter 16 for the Vertical value, and I could take that value even higher.

Let's try 24. My gosh!That looks great!All right, I'll click OK in order to accept that modification.So you get the idea, you can do anything at this point with these pathoutlines, and every step of the way, every modification you make is going todeliver super smooth results.For example, let's say I want to take this little divot in his skull and I want to move it closer to his nose.Well, if I just drag the black path, notice I leave a hole, because there'salways a corresponding hole in the white paths for the black paths, so I've got toundo that modification there.

So what I need to do is just go ahead and marquee around those two, and in thiscase, I go ahead and select the entire path.I forget of course this is a compound path, so I'm going to grab them both.And by the way, that little marquee trick is only going to work if you pressCtrl+K, Command+K on the Mac, and then you go here to Selection & Anchor PointsDisplay and you turn on Object Selection by Path Only, that's very important,otherwise you're going to drag that white path around.Anyway, I'll go ahead and Cancel out of there because mine was already turned on.I'll grab the White Arrow tool, click off the shapes, then I will Alt+drag orOption+drag around those two paths in order to select them both, that is, theyare two coincident paths;one right on top of the other.

Then I'll just go ahead and drag it over, like so.So again, no end to the modifications you can make, the finessing that you canapply to this flag. Everything, no matter what, is going to come out supersmooth, as impeccably smooth as it ever was in the first place,thanks to our meticulously step-by-step approach to this project - every one ofthose steps, by the way, is extremely important - and the power of the Live Tracefeature here inside Illustrator.

Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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